Ryan James
LIS 663
Dr. Jacso
Term Paper
A: WOS quick search for “grading”
Fig. 1
CSA/PsycINFO search for “grading”
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Fig. 2
B: WOS search for “grade inflation”
Fig. 3
CSA/PsycINFO search for “grade AND inflation”
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Fig. 4
Notes: In CSA/PsycINFO the space is interpreted as phrase searching. I added the
Boolean AND to match the search in WOS which interprets the space as AND. Searching
in CSA/PsycINFO without the Boolean AND gives 117 results.
C: WOS search for “grade* inflat*”
Fig. 5
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CSA/PsycINFO search for “grade* AND inflat*”
Fig. 6
Notes: Searching in WOS for “grade$ inflate*” gave 416 results indicating the usage of $
in the term “grade” shows little improvement. A search for “grad* inflate*” gave 1,173
results, indicating poor use of wildcards. A search for “grad$$$ inflate*” gave 19 results,
a few were relevant, but the term “gradual” is included and leads to several irrelevant
results, indicating this strategy isn’t very effective.
D: WOS search for “grade* inflat* AND (“higher ed*” OR college* OR universit*)”
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Fig. 7
CSA/PsycINFO search for “WOS search for “grade* inflat* AND (“higher ed*” OR
college* OR universit*)”
Fig. 8
Notes: Limiting the search in CSA/PsycINFO to keyword gave 39 results (fig. 9).
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Fig. 9
E: WOS search for “grade* inflat* AND (“higher ed*” OR college* OR universit*)
AND (facult* OR teacher* OR instructor*)”
Fig. 10
CSA/PsycINFO search for “grade* inflat* AND (“higher ed*” OR college* OR
universit*) AND (facult* OR teacher* OR instructor*)”
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Fig. 11
Notes: There are 162 results in CSA/PsycINFO, but only 13 in WOS for the same search.
Limiting the search in CSA/PsycINFO to keyword gave 15 results (fig. 12).
Fig. 12
F: WOS search for “grade* inflat* AND ("higher ed*" OR college* OR universit*) AND
(facult* OR teacher* OR instructor*) AND (eval* OR assess* OR measur*)”
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Fig. 13
CSA/PsycINFO search for “grade* inflat* AND ("higher ed*" OR college* OR
universit*) AND (facult* OR teacher* OR instructor*) AND (eval* OR assess* OR
measur*)”
Fig. 14
Notes: CSA/PsycINFO gave so many results for the search because it is also searching
the text of cited references. For example, the second record returned (Fig. 15) likely
would not have ranked so high, except many of the searched terms were in the list of
cited references.
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Fig. 15
Changing the search from “anywhere” to “keyword” gave 11 results (fig. 16). In
CSA/PsycINFO “keyword” searching includes title, descriptor, and abstract fields, but
not cited references and other fields. The comparison of figures 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, and 16
show how inflated the search results can be when searching “anywhere” as opposed to
“keyword” in CSA/PsycINFO.
Fig. 16
G: WOS search for “grade* inflat* AND ("higher ed*" OR college* OR universit*)
AND (facult* OR teacher* OR instructor*) AND (eval* OR assess* OR measur*)”
limited to English language.
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Fig. 17
CSA/PsycINFO keyword search for “grade* inflat* AND ("higher ed*" OR college* OR
universit*) AND (facult* OR teacher* OR instructor*) AND (eval* OR assess* OR
measur*)” limited to English language.
Fig. 18
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Final results for WOS:
Record 1 of 6
Author(s): McPherson, MA (McPherson, Michael A.); Jewell, RT (Jewell, R. Todd)
Title: Leveling the playing field: Should student evaluation scores be adjusted?
Source: SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, 88 (3): 868-881 SEP 2007
ISSN: 0038-4941
Record 2 of 6
Author(s): Walsh, CM; Seldomridge, LA
Title: Clinical grades: Upward bound
Source: JOURNAL OF NURSING EDUCATION, 44 (4): 162-168 APR 2005
ISSN: 0148-4834
Record 3 of 6
Author(s): Ellis, L; Burke, DM; Lomire, P; McCormack, DR
Title: Student grades and average ratings of instructional quality: The need for
adjustment
Source: JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, 97 (1): 35-40 SEP-OCT 2003
ISSN: 0022-0671
Record 4 of 6
Author(s): Colletti, LM
Title: Difficulty with negative feedback: Face-to-face evaluation of junior medical
student clinical performance results in grade inflation
Source: JOURNAL OF SURGICAL RESEARCH, 90 (1): 82-87 MAY 1 2000
ISSN: 0022-4804
Record 5 of 6
Author(s): Krautmann, AC; Sander, W
Title: Grades and student evaluations of teachers
Source: ECONOMICS OF EDUCATION REVIEW, 18 (1): 59-63 FEB 1999
ISSN: 0272-7757
Record 6 of 6
Author(s): Greenwald, AG; Gillmore, GM
Title: Grading leniency is a removable contaminant of student ratings
Source: AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST, 52 (11): 1209-1217 NOV 1997
ISSN: 0003-066X
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Final Results from CSA/PsycINFO:
Felton, James, John Mitchell, and Michael Stinson. 2004. Web-based student evaluations
of professors: The relations between perceived quality, easiness and sexiness.
Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 29, no. 1 (Feb) : 91-108. Database
on-line. Available from CSA, PsycINFO.
Germain, Marie-Line, Terri A. Scandura. 2005. Grade Inflation And Student Individual
Differences as Systematic Bias in Faculty Evaluations. Journal of Instructional
Psychology 32, no. 1 (Mar) : 58-67. Database on-line. Available from CSA,
PsycINFO.
Greenwald, Anthony G., Gerald M. Gillmore. 1997. Grading leniency is a removable
contaminant of student ratings. American Psychologist 52, no. 11 (Nov) : 12091217. Database on-line. Available from CSA, PsycINFO.
Hoffman, Roy A. 1983. Grade inflation and student evaluations of college courses.
Educational & Psychological Research 3, no. 3 (Sum) : 151-160. Database on-line.
Available from CSA, PsycINFO.
Kierstead, Fred D. 1983. The burnout of educational leadership: A firefighter's mentality
in a world of brushfires. Focus on Learning 9, no. 2: 23-28. Database on-line.
Available from CSA, PsycINFO.
Landrum, R. E. 1999. Student expectations of grade inflation. Journal of Research &
Development in Education 32, no. 2 (Win) : 124-128. Database on-line. Available
from CSA, PsycINFO.
McPherson, Michael A., R. T. Jewell. 2007. Leveling the playing field: Should student
evaluation scores be adjusted? Social Science Quarterly 88, no. 3 (Sep) : 868-881.
Database on-line. Available from CSA, PsycINFO.
Schuh, Allen J. 1983. Grade inflation as a legitimate response to the unreliability of
teacher-made tests for university-level coursework. Bulletin of the Psychonomic
Society 21, no. 3 (May) : 209-212. Database on-line. Available from CSA,
PsycINFO.
Singleton, Royce. 1978. Effects of grade inflation on satisfaction with final grade: A case
of relative deprivation. Journal of Social Psychology 105, no. 1 (Jun) : 37-41.
Database on-line. Available from CSA, PsycINFO.
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Toth, Linda S., Linda G. Montagna. 2002. Class size and achievement in higher
education: A summary of current research. College Student Journal 36, no. 2 (Jun) :
253-260. Database on-line. Available from CSA, PsycINFO.
Citation Discussion:
CSA/PsycINFO includes books and book chapters. At least four of the items
are books or book chapters.
Some databases have more current records. For example the most recent issue
of the journal Sex Roles in CSA/PsycINFO is April 2007, Ebsco and WoS have
November. Arbuckle 2003 has a citation in the August issue, so CSA/PsycINFO does not
have this information.
The databases do not cover the same journals. For example the Journal of
Hispanic Higher Education is covered by CSA/PsycINFO and Ebsco, but not Wos.
Citation data is not collected for all the journals. Ebsco has Journal of
Hispanic Higher Education, but does not appear to be gathering citation data on it.
There are gaps in the coverage of journals. Ellis 2003 is cited by Wright 2006
in Education Research Quarterly. It appears CSA/PsycINFO stopped covering this
journal in 1990 so the citation is not recorded.
Failure of software to correctly match citations with cited articles. Ebsco has
records for two articles, Griffin 2004 and Wendorf 2005, that cite both the Greenwald
article and Olivares 2001, but the software failed to match them. They are correctly
matched in CSA/PyscINFO and WoS.
There are errors in the records. Leamon 2005 is cited by Kogan 2007.
However, in CSA/PsycINFO the Kogan 2007 record has errors in the list of references. It
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has the entity character code for ndash instead of the ndash between the page numbers. I
suspect this problem is preventing the software from matching the records.
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